Coinbase Partners With MUFG For Japanese Expansion

Coinbase is launching a partnership with Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group (MUFG) to help bring its platform to Japan, the company said in a post Thursday. 

The well-known cryptocurrency platform began in 2012 as a platform for users to buy and sell bitcoin. Since then it has expanded into a crypto-asset platform home to thousands of blockchains, tokens and projects and has become the largest US cryptocurrency exchange. Today, Coinbase serves over 9,000 institutions and 68 million users in over 100 countries. 

“At the moment I don’t have anything to share beyond what is in the blog post. But happy to stay in touch should that change,” a Coinbase spokesperson said in an email to Blockworks. 

MUFG is one of the largest banks in Japan with over 40 million Japanese customers. The partnership will help Japanese people access the platform to trade on Coinbase’s exchange by offering “MUFG Quick Deposit” for users in the country, it said. 

“We will be launching retail products first including a suite of five top assets based on trading volume, and will add more assets and products in the coming months. We also plan to introduce more localized versions of globally popular services such as advanced trading, Coinbase for Institutions, and more in the future,” the company said. 

The company did not disclose an exact date of the launch in Japan. But Japanese customers in the country can currently buy bitcoin, ethereum and litecoin through Coinbase’s platform, according to its website. 

While Japan has had strict crypto regulatory guidelines, it was the first country in the world to create a law characterizing “crypto assets” as a legal term. The country requires entities to register as Crypto Asset Exchange Service Providers in order to provide exchange services to residents in Japan. Additionally, under Japanese law crypto assets are not treated as money nor equated with fiat currencies and the assets are not supported by the government or central bank of Japan. 

With that said, the adoption of cryptocurrencies in Japan is still accelerating at a quick pace as crypto trading picks up across the nation. For reference, Japan’s virtual currency deposits, also known as cryptocurrency deposits, hit an all time high in March of about 1.4 trillion yen, or about $13 billion. This level was seven times higher than the year-ago month for crypto deposits, according to the Japan Virtual and Crypto Assets Exchange Association (JVCEA).

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